10 YEARS OF THE BF SIX TO WATCH! My first exposure to Josh Hicks’s Hotelitor was as a diagrammatic cutaway print at the Brighton Illustration Fair some years ago. It was a concise but neat premise – a giant robot that was also a hotel – and one of those Hicks-ian concepts that immediately stimulated the imagination. Hicks, of course, has already proven his track record at combining grand concepts, wacky humour and moments of unlikely pathos in his long-running Glorious Wrestling Alliance strip which, like Hotelitor, has also been collected and published by Lerner/Graphic Universe.
In a future where a devastated Earth can no longer support life, humanity has left for the stars to form colonies in space. Hotelitor is described as the finest hospitality craft around – a hotel but also the local defence system. When its colony is attacked by a similarly gigantic alien being this gargantuan robot-cum-hotel is, post-battle, thrust into the depths of space and lost in the void. As the hotel residents splinter into factions, chaos reigns. Can the inhabitants resolve their differences and work towards a common goal? What is behind the attacks from the huge alien entities? And what part does the secretive Apatus corporation play in all these events?
Hotelitor, in the vein of GWA, also makes use of a large ensemble cast but there is one lead character new to the hotel team who acts as our point-of-view connection as we are introduced to this strange new world. Anna Greene is that young intern who suddenly finds herself in a position of unlikely responsibility. Other major players include the canine Robert Gurney, a journalist with a vital role to play; Klak the alien musician-in-residence around whom a cult quickly forms when Hotelitor is lost in space; the unpleasant shift manager Graham Smough who prioritises the VIP guest faction when disaster strikes; and Anna’s friends and allies, personal trainer Rodney Ewing and bellhop Tori Abe.
Hotelitor plays with a number of plot elements as it slides across genre definitions. What we have here is a kind of comedic science-fiction mystery thriller with a hint of Lord of the Flies thrown in. But a LOTF where middle-aged white men are running the show rather than callow schoolboys. It’s a story where the seeds of the bigger picture are sowed in advance, coming together in a most satisfying finale where plotlines converge and new possibilities for the cast are hinted at. And there’s plenty of corporate super-villainy thrown in for good measure. Capitalists always make for the best baddies.
As is to be expected from a Hicks script the humour is balanced with moments of humanity, and even the minor cast members feel like rounded individuals with full backstories. His cartooning is as vibrant as ever with an accessible clarity that nonetheless makes use of a vast array of visual narrative storytelling tricks and tools. If there’s one element that perhaps feels a little contradictory it’s the size at which Hotelitor has been published. It’s not far off digest-sized, meaning the physicality of its presentation doesn’t quite match the majesty of its concept.
There’s plenty of scope left for more Hotelitor adventures at the end of this volume and we can only hope that becomes a reality. Josh Hicks possesses one of the most inventive imaginations in UK comics and it’s shown at its finest here. Surely it can be only be a matter of time before his concepts are optioned for other media…
Josh Hicks (W/A) • Lerner/Graphic Universe, $16.99
Review by Andy Oliver
Josh Hicks will be a guest artist at the ’10 Years of the Broken Frontier Six to Watch’ Party at Gosh! Comics this coming Saturday, August 31st. Full details here.
2024 marks the tenth year of Broken Frontier’s ‘Six to Watch‘ initiative. Look for articles throughout the year celebrating the work of those artists who have been a part of the programme.
